Traditionally, information storage has to be performed local to the computer that creates, gathers and processes such information. However, stored information has become too valuable in many circumstances to assume risk associated with the locality of its storage and the burden to perform a complicated local backup strategy.
To overcome these disadvantages several approaches are discussed to implement a centralized external information storage and management.
For example, U.S. 2002/0049778 A1 describes a method for providing information outsourcing. A storage node is located remotely from an information outsourcing enterprise. The enterprise communicatively couples to the storage node to transfer information between the enterprise and the storage node in real-time to enable primary storage, static and dynamic mirroring, and backup and disaster recovery of enterprise information. A plurality of enterprises that are located remotely with respect to the storage node are communicatively coupled to the storage node by way of communication channels having sufficient performance characteristics to enable said storage node to provide primary storage services to these enterprises. The storage node stores the information transferred from said plurality of enterprises. The enterprise may enter requests to update the amount of reserved storage space at the storage node. The transfer of information between the storage node and the enterprises is performed in a manner that is substantially transparent to application programs executing at the enterprise. Further, multiple storage nodes can be communicatively connected to enable the system to transfer information between them.